Broken Connection
by Fifth Horseman
Summary: When our connections break and we begin to drift, it only takes one to anchor us back to the world. Why can we never see that the one we need has been with us all along.


**Disclaimer: **Bleach is owned by Tite Kubo. He created this world, I'm just playing in it.

**AN:** Finally, I have something new to put out. I'm rusty as hell so I have no idea if this is any good or not, it's been too long since my last effort went up.

This story is from a batch of ideas I started developing after I finished Unlocked Hearts. Took me forever to write it with long periods of inactivity between tries and attempts at other works stuffed in there.

In a way, it has been an exercise in frustration and I struggled with this way more than I needed to. Part of the problem may have been that this was originally supposed to be another lemon. However, writing lemons really isn't my thing. I can do it, but it is not something I aspire to to any great degree so I had to change my entire view on this story. And as it is, I don't think a lemon would have made sense here anyway and I absolutely refuse to write PWP, or write a lemon just for the sake of writing one.

I can pretty much predict the complaints I'll get. It should have been a lemon. There's too much narrative and not enough dialogue.

Blah, blah, blah.

Life has sucked for the last few months so that fact that I even managed to get this written at all is an major accomplishment on its own. Hopefully this rust breaker isn't a total loss and someone will like it.

Who knows, maybe it will actually be crap and I'll see more reviews than usual that way, since that seems to be the way this site works anymore.

Anyway, on with the show.

* * *

_**Broken Connection**_

The repeated smack and thump of fists and feet striking a heavy bag reverberated throughout the expanse of the empty dojo. A lithe seventeen year old girl with long, spiky black hair mercilessly pounded away at the bag with her taped fists and feet, her sweat soaked gi sticking to her like a second skin in the stuffy training hall.

The black belt tied around her waist and the furious but precise nature of her movements spoke of her obvious skill, but the look in her eyes told of a mind that was not on the same task as the body. She was distracted. Her mind was filled with anger and hurt, frustration and a feeling of loss.

All of those chaotic emotions shared a focal point, a root cause that led her to be relentlessly hammering at a sand filled canvas bag long after everyone else had gone home for the night.

That root cause was Ichigo Kurosaki.

The incident that had pushed her to this point had occurred a couple of weeks earlier when she found him all alone in an unused classroom well after school had let out. He was sitting atop an unused desk that had been pushed back against the wall opposite the windows, the fading daylight washing over him. His knees were drawn up and his arms folded across them, chin resting on his forearms.

He was so deeply immersed in his thoughts that he hadn't heard the door slide open or heard her call his name multiple times. As was her way, she began to get angry and was about to walk out and leave him to his brooding, but something made her stop. It wasn't until she blocked the light and called his name again that he finally noticed he was no longer alone and looked up.

The look on his face, visible for only a brief moment, actually scared her. She hadn't seen a look on his face like that since he lost his mother.

He had looked lost, alone, and hurt. It wasn't the face he had been showing them all the rest of the time, heck he wasn't even scowling. He just wore a kind of sad little smile as he tuned back into reality and said, _'Hey Tatsuki, what's up?'_, like nothing was wrong.

'_What the hell are you doing sitting in here all by yourself?'_ she had asked him. He hadn't been himself since losing his powers. At first he had seemed okay, but as time went on he started to become more distant and began to pull away from his friends, like he was trying to keep them all at arms length.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why. Without his powers he felt like he couldn't protect the people he cared about and he felt ashamed that he could no longer fill the role for them all that he used to.

He was an idiot, and she had told him so. That desire to protect his friends was a two way street and he couldn't seem to understand that they all wanted to protect him just as much as he wanted to protect them.

She had to admit, she had been a little harsh in getting that point through his head and actually felt bad when she saw the look on his face as she let him have it…again…for keeping her out of the loop the whole time and for still not taking the time to tell her everything that had happened.

"_Remember the day I asked you what I was to you?"_ she asked him. _"Even after everything that's happened since then, you still haven't answered me. You won't tell me anything. Even now you're still shutting me out."_

"_And what would I tell you Tatsuki? You've already heard it all from Orihime and Chad and Uryuu."_

It was a lazy response, almost a brush off. They'd been down that road before.

"_I want to hear it from you Ichigo," _her voice taking on an angry tone. She'd had enough of this. _"I want to hear it all from your mouth, I want to hear the story from the one who was in the middle of it right from the start, the one who led the charge."_

"_Why?"_ He had started to get angry himself then. _"So you can tell me again how wrong I was? So you can hit me and make me bleed again, take your anger out on me because I dared to chose not to get you involved in a battle you couldn't win or even survive?"_

"_That wasn't your decision…"_

"_To hell it wasn't!"_ he had roared as he stood, catching her off guard. _"Do you know how many times I got cut all up or beat to hell? How many times I actually fucking died?! It's because I _was_ right in the middle of it that it _was_ my decision to make. If you listened to even one word that the others told you, then you know there wasn't one enemy we faced that you could have fought and survived against, never mind beaten."_

He started to walk out, but stopped at her side, neither looking at each other.

"_You want to beat me up, yell at me, hurt me... fine,"_ his voice was quiet, almost subdued. _"You want to be angry with me, you're welcome to it. At least you're still alive to be angry. Go ahead and hate my guts Tatsuki because I won't apologize for trying to keep you safe."_

He stepped to the door but stopped again before exiting. _"What were you to me Tatsuki? My friend, the first friend I ever had. Someone I would lay down my life for. Someone I would become broken for just to keep them from harm. What was I to you?" _

The soft sound of the door sliding shut might as well have been thunder to her ears in its finality. Instead of shaking him out his funk, she had driven him away. They hadn't spoken to each other since.

_'What was he to me?'_ she thought as she pounded the bag with renewed vigour.

He was her first real friend. All of the other kids at the dojo shied away from her because of her aggressive nature and the fact that she could beat them all up. But not Ichigo, even if he was pretty soft and a definite mama's boy. Even though he cried a lot when she hit him, he still came back, kept partnering up with her and with that big smile of his, vowing that one day he'd beat her.

He certainly wasn't the bravest or the strongest kid back then, but it was pretty hard not to like him. Enough so that she started to protect him from bullies when they were away from the dojo.

After his mother died he wasn't the same anymore. He was broken and she wanted to fix him but she didn't know how. It hurt so much to see her friend become distant, to watch him pace up and down the riverbank in his grief, to see him in so much pain and to not know what to do about it.

She did the only thing she really could do. She continued to be his friend, to stick by him, hang out with him, train with him, and punch out the bullies that bothered him when he couldn't do it himself.

He was also the first person to really hurt her emotionally, the first person to nearly make her cry. It wasn't on purpose and to this day he probably still didn't realize the effect his actions had on her. But when he had finally been able to defeat her in a sparring match and then quit coming to the dojo, it was like both a knife in the back and a kick to the guts.

She had been outwardly angry about it of course, but she kept the hurt to herself. She had a reputation to keep up after all and the fearsome Dragon of Karakura couldn't be seen displaying such emotions where others could see it. But in the privacy of her own home, in her room, she could brood about it if she wanted to and maybe, just maybe, one time, she could scream and cry into her pillow until it didn't hurt quite so much.

She let out some of that long suppressed pain against the heavy bag, furiously hammering punch after punch and kick after kick into it. Faster and harder with every blow until with a loud shout and a furious back spinning kick, she very nearly dislodged the bag from its ceiling mount.

She stumbled away from it, arms and legs rubbery and her strength spent on the explosive flurry. Sweat was pouring off of her as she bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch her breath. She had really overdone it this time and she knew she would be paying for it tomorrow. Too bad this hadn't really done much to make her feel any better.

As much as him leaving the dojo had hurt and still did, it had nothing on more recent events. The way he tried to put her off over her concerns about Orihime and the fact that the best response she could come up with was to lash out at him, hurt him and make him bleed. Watching him and Chad and Uryuu disappear into the portal that sketchy Urahara guy opened up for them and learning just where the hell it was taking them. She had felt like she was being completely shut out and abandoned. That was the breaking point and it was why she just couldn't let it go and the inability to do so had only made things worse.

She straightened and ran her hands through her sweat soaked hair and trudged off to the locker room. After stripping down and laying out her workout gear so it could air out and dry a little before she packed it up, she retrieved the shampoo and body wash from her athletic bag and hit the shower. Turning the water up as hot as she could stand it she stepped under the heated spray, letting it work on her overused muscles and hoping it would ease some of her tension.

Fat chance of that really as her mind went right back to her previous thoughts.

The most painful incident with Ichigo was the latest one and the finality present in that fight that had struck her right at her core. The stupid thing of it was that she had remained angry for most of the time since. An anger that had hidden the fresh hurt from even her own awareness so well that she had only just begun to realize it and truly think things through over the last couple of days.

She'd pushed him too far. She had kept childishly and selfishly beating him over the head with her anger at being left out of things. Even if there was nothing she could have done, she still felt that she should have been told, that she had a right to know what kind of danger that he and their friends were putting themselves in and why.

She sighed and leaned forward, her hands braced against the tiled wall supporting her as she let the hot water drill into her neck and shoulders. By being selfish and only thinking of her own anger over things she hadn't considered how he was coping with losing his shinigami abilities. He couldn't even see spirits now like he had for most of his life, something that had been every day normal for him.

No matter how much he tried to convince everyone, and himself especially, that he was happy to just have a normal life now like he always wanted, it was obviously not the truth. If she had only tried to be patient and had at least made an attempt to understand things from his end rather than getting mad and yelling at him, maybe she could have eventually gotten him to open up to her.

Everyone else had just seemed content to leave him be with the hope that with a little time he would be the same old Ichigo again. To her it seemed like the worst thing they could do for him and she was getting more and more pissed about it the more she thought about it.

But had she been any better? She new him better than everyone else, had known him longer. She should have been trying to re-establish a closer friendship and making sure that he knew that she was there for him no matter what. That if he wanted to talk she would listen and not bite his head off for keeping her on the outside. That would have been a hell of a lot better than yelling at him and reminding him of what he could no longer do and of what he had lost.

"Stupid," she admonished herself. "Some friend I am. When I should have been trying to help him, I hurt him instead. I'm just as bad as everyone else, those damned shinigami included!"

She had begun feeling a great deal of disgust at them too. Once Ichigo's powers had left him they did too and they hadn't been back since. Well, except for that afro haired doofus that was assigned to the town, but he didn't count for much. No one from the Soul Society had come back to see him or even check on how he was doing. Even the former shinigami that lived around Karakura had been scarce.

When she had asked about it once Uryuu had told her that they were likely under orders to leave him alone and just let him live a normal life free of the problems of the afterlife and the locals had probably decided to do the same. She could understand that she supposed, but she still thought it was bullshit.

They all owed Ichigo for their continued existence. Did they honestly think that cutting him off entirely from all of the friends he had made, the people he had fought and bled with and for, was doing right by him?

_"Do you know how many times I got cut all up or beat to hell? How many times I actually fucking died?!"_

If what he said was true then he had suffered great harm for them as well. It hadn't been until she got home that night and let the conversation roll through her head yet again that those words had finally sunk in with all of the weight attached to them. Despite having seen him running around carrying that huge sword and despite her own brush with death, she had never thought of the consequences of whatever it was that he had been doing.

One didn't fight beings that could suck out your soul, or crush you with their mere presence, or take up a sword without consequences attached. Orihime and the others had only spoken in the most general terms about getting hurt when they told her what they had taken part in.

She went to Orihime's that night and demanded to know if Ichigo had really died. She had been angry and felt bad for being short with Orihime, but she needed to know. Hime wouldn't give her specifics but she did confirm that Ichigo had indeed died twice while in Hueco Mundo. She admitted to being the one that brought him back the first time, a revelation that both amazed and scared the hell out of her to think that her friend had that kind of power. However, she wouldn't say a word about what happened the second time.

She didn't sleep much that night. She spent most of it sitting on her bed, back to the wall and staring blankly out the window. He had been hurt, badly and several times it seemed. He had actually died. Twice. And after being revived he continued to fight for them until he had no choice but to sacrifice his powers, part of his soul, and his cherished ability to protect in order to save them all.

Then the shinigami repay his sacrifice by abandoning him, cutting themselves right out of his life as if he had never existed at all. When she finally nodded off that night it was right into a nightmare. A grisly dream of Ichigo, cut up, broken and bleeding, and being left to slowly die all alone.

She let her anger at the denizens of the afterlife roll around in her head as she finished her shower, letting it take her mind off of her own immediate problems concerning the Strawberry. It wasn't until she had gotten home, had dinner and done her homework, and was lying in her bed trying to get to sleep that she turned back to the question she had been trying to answer all day.

What was Ichigo to her?

Here in the privacy of her room with most of the day's tension and anger drained from her, she could allow her thoughts and personal feelings to flow a little more freely and honestly without worrying about maintaining an image and hiding anything behind it.

What was Ichigo to her ?

He was her friend. Her first true friend.

He was the wounded boy she tried to reach after his Mom died and his smile faded away.

He was the constantly scowling, overprotective presence in her life.

And to be truly honest with herself, he was the boy that she now realized she had fallen for the first time she had seen that world brightening smile.

He was the first and only boy she had ever loved.

And she may have lost any chance she ever had of finding the courage to tell him so.

* * *

_'Disconnected,'_ Ichigo thought as he sat by the river overlooking the spot where his mother was taken from him all those years ago. That seemed to be the perfect way to describe how he felt about his life these days.

The loss of his shinigami abilities had disconnected him from parts of his own soul. He couldn't feel or hear either Zangetsu or his hollow anymore. A part of himself was just gone and an open, gaping wound was left behind. One that didn't seem inclined to heal.

The loss of his power had also disconnected him from all of the people he had met and befriended among the denizens of the afterlife. People he had fought beside and bled for, people he had become bonded to in one way or another. If any of them had come back to Karakura at all they hadn't let him know it.

Had they been ordered to leave him be and let him live his life free of contact with them, or was it because he was now powerless and no longer useful to them?

He didn't want to believe that it was the latter, but there was always that chance.

He had even become disconnected from his mentors and pseudo-kin. He hadn't seen Kisuke, Yoruichi, or the Vizards since his powers faded away. Neither side had sought out the other. He had at least expected to see a certain black cat around now and then, or to be blindsided a time or two by a sandal and have Hiyori ranting at him for not coming around to see them.

He couldn't see spirits anymore and his friends were fighting the hollows in his stead. They danced around the subject with him like he would shatter and fall apart if they so much as mentioned anything about the spiritual world in his presence. He could appreciate their concern for him, but it only served to make him feel even more disconnected from them.

In some part of his mind he knew he was withdrawing from everyone even as he tried to convince them and himself that he wasn't. He didn't want them to worry about him or to see the increasing mess he was becoming inside. But they could easily see through the false cheerfulness he displayed to them and he knew it.

He was even pulling away from his family and he knew that Karin and Yuzu had noticed. They tried their best to keep his flagging spirits up and he loved them dearly for it, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that he was failing them by not being able to protect them as he once had.

Sure, Goat Chin had his abilities back and he was certainly able to do what he no longer could, but it still didn't feel right to him. He kept flashing back to the night he gained the power from Rukia, the despair he felt as his family was at the mercy of the hollow. If something like that were to happen again, he had no way to stop it and it was eating him alive.

Then there was the most recent problem, the blow up with Tatsuki three weeks ago. Over the last few years they hadn't been as close as they had once been, but it still hurt that they had barely even looked at each other since their clash. Sure, they had argued and disagreed before, but it had never led to an estrangement like this.

He wasn't totally dense, he knew her well enough to understand why she had been so pissed at being kept out of things. They were a lot alike in that regard. What he didn't get though was why she was still so hung up on hearing all about things from him when he knew Orihime, Chad, and Uryuu had already told her.

He had been thinking a lot lately about the history of his friendship with the tough as nails tomboy, an unlikely one that began with two little kids in oversized sparring gear having at each other at the local dojo. Even though she had easily beaten him and made him cry, he had taken to that little dark haired girl right away.

Maybe he could sense the lack of true malice in her taunts and her blows. The other kids may have thought she was mean and were scared because she beat them, but not him. It didn't matter how many times she knocked him down or made him cry, he still saw her the same way and he kept getting back up to go again.

It always made him smile when he recalled the look on her face when he first started calling her Tatsuki-chan. It was a look of almost stunned indignation, as if it sounded far too cute for her tough image. Especially when he'd thank her for getting a bully off his back.

He had been too young to think about it much at the time, but he could realize now how much it had meant to him for her to stick by him like she did after his mother died. She hadn't known what to do, his grief and sadness wasn't something she could protect him from with her fists after all. But it had been enough to have her around even if neither of them really said much of anything as he attempted to deal with the loss.

He had also come to realize lately that he had done her a great wrong. When he had finally been able to beat her in a match, he quit the dojo. She had been mad, but there had been another look on her face that day that he stupidly hadn't even taken the time to identify until now, even though that image had remained clear in his mind's eye ever since.

He had hurt her. That look had only been present for an instant, but it had definitely been there. He felt stupid that it had taken him so long to realize what he had done. That was only the start though because leaving the dojo was also the event that slowly began to put some separation in their friendship. Bit by bit they began to spend less time together.

It only served to make him feel worse about the last three weeks, yet he hadn't been able to be the one to take that first step to break this stalemate. She was obviously still pissed and in a foul mood over the whole thing and he had no desire to get into another argument with her. There was also a stupid part of him that refused to budge because he saw the whole altercation as being her fault. It was an awfully petty and small viewpoint for him to have, but there it was. Even so, he still felt pretty miserable about it.

He still was not about to apologize for keeping her out of things though. As it was, not counting the run in with Orihime's hollowfied brother, she had nearly died twice. The first time thanks to Yammy nearly sucking out her soul, the second by standing between an evolved Aizen and her friends and being a hair's breadth away from having her soul obliterated by his overwhelming power.

The fact that someone else had to step in before he could get there on both occasions spoke of just how truly dangerous the situations had been for her when she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, never mind jumping in as an active participant. While he was grateful that others had been able to forestall her demise and keep the enemy at bay until he arrived, it still ate at him to know that he hadn't been there when she needed him.

He had been thinking a lot about that over the last three weeks, about how much of a hole it would have left in his life if he had lost her. Much to his surprise, the notion that maybe he thought about his oldest friend in a way that involved more than just simple friendship had begun to seep though the thick concrete barrier to that part of his brain, like water through an ever widening crack in a dam.

He had never openly had any kind of feelings like that for anyone, hell, he had rarely entertained such thoughts even in private. He was smart enough to know that he was likely still compensating for his mother's death, subconsciously shoving aside the notion of having deeper feelings for anyone so that he wouldn't be hurt again if he lost them. As a nine year old boy there had been nothing and no one he had loved more than his mother and losing her had nearly shattered him altogether. He never wanted to go through that again, so he had concentrated on being a protector and rarely if ever thought about having anyone be that close to his heart again.

On the surface it seemed like such an absurd notion too. Cripes, this was Tatsuki Arisawa, the ass kicking tomboy karate champion, the feared Dragon of Karakura. The girl who used to kick his ass with great regularity. But they used to be really close, their relationship seeming so easy and natural, as if they had always belonged together.

Why in the hell couldn't this revelation have come to him before this? Why did it have to come at him now after they had argued and such an air of finality had settled in around them? Why was he just realizing now that Tatsuki meant far more to him than he had ever let himself consider before?

Of course, Tatsuki would probably stomp a mud hole in him and walk it dry if she knew the direction his thoughts about her seemed to have taken. However it raised the inevitable question in his mind about how she might feel. Did she have any feelings like that towards him, was that a part of why she had been so angry and upset with him for not letting her in on what had been happening?

That seemed like a rather absurd notion too, but he supposed anything was possible. He just hoped it wasn't this disconnected and isolated feeling twisting his mind and making him see and feel things that weren't actually there. He was having enough trouble as it was now without adding that to the mix.

A shadow fell over him and he looked up the bank behind him to see the very object of his thoughts standing there. Scuffed up running shoes, cut off denim shorts, her hands shoved into the pockets, and a black t-shirt advertising some tournament she had recently attended. And probably won. Her head was down but he could still see the expression on her face. She looked pretty much the same way that he felt right now.

It took a few moments before she looked up but when she did she looked nervous and he could swear that her eyes were a little red. He had to be imagining it.

"Can we talk...Ichigo?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah, sure," he answered.

She slowly walked down the embankment and sat to his right, her eyes finally rising from contemplating the ground and looking out over the river. She remained quiet but he had no intention of pushing her. She'd speak when she was ready. When she finally did break the uncomfortable silence a few minutes later, her words surprised him.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice soft yet a little ragged. "I pushed too hard, too many times until I pushed you away." She hung her head again. "I never wanted that. I'm supposed to be your friend and if you didn't want to tell me the story yourself I should have respected that. I should have respected that you had your reasons and that if you wanted to, you'd tell me on your own. Instead, I made a mess of things."

"I didn't help things much by snapping at you," he acknowledged. "Just made things worse if anything."

She shook her head. "I bitched at you so much I didn't exactly give you a lot of other options. I was being selfish Ichigo."

"You were worried about Orihime," he said. "And I was stupid. I thought I could make you mad enough at me that you would leave it be." He sighed. "And I was even dumber in thinking that you wouldn't still want to hear about things from me even after the others told you."

"I was worried about you too you know," she shot back quickly. "You were fighting monsters and getting hurt protecting everyone. Then you disappeared into that...thing to go after Orihime." She still got the chills at what she felt when that black portal opened up. It was like something cold had touched her soul and Ichigo and the others had jumped into it without hesitation. "I didn't know if I'd ever see either of you again. I wanted to go after you so badly and help, to do...something, anything, rather than have to sit and wait to see if you came back."

He sighed. "There wasn't anything you..."

"I know," she blurted, cutting him off. "There wasn't anything I could do, I know that." The sound of defeat was evident in her voice. "I could see spirits but that was all. It took a while but I've finally gotten it through my head that I would have been worse than useless to you. Still hurts like hell to admit it but I know it."

"That's kind of how I've felt since I lost my abilities," he said softly. "I thought being normal was what I wanted, that it would be a relief not to see spirits anymore, or be chasing down hollows or fighting all of the soul reaper's battles for them."

"But that's not the case is it?" she asked sullenly.

He shook his head. "No, it's not. It's killing me Tatsuki. At first it was okay and I could deal with it, but the first time I had to watch Chad and Uryuu and Orihime go off to fight a hollow...I nearly took off after them and my guts were tied in knots until they came back safe. It's like that every time and it just gets worse. I can't protect my family or friends or any one else from the hollows. I can't purify their tortured souls or send them and other spirits on to the Soul Society. And without Zangetsu and my hollow in my head anymore, it feels like a part of my soul has been torn away and it's bleeding me to death."

It wasn't his intent, but his words hit her like a hammer blow and she seemed to sink in upon herself.

"And I kept reminding you of what you couldn't do anymore every time I opened my big mouth. I didn't even think about it. I didn't think about how I was making you feel." In her lap, her hands tightened into fists. "I...I'm so sorry Ichigo." Her voice was becoming more and more strained. "I'm such an idiot. I didn't think..."

"How could you have known Tatsuki?" he interrupted. He was getting a bit worried, it was in no way close to normal to see her like this and the blame was not all hers to take. "I was hiding how I felt from everyone. Damn it, I wouldn't even admit it to myself until I blew up at you that day."

Her head shot up and she looked in his eyes. There was a desperate, almost pleading look in hers and it was the closest he had ever seen her to being in tears. "I should have known because I know _you_ Ichigo," she blurted. "I was there, I know what you were like after your Mom died. I know how you think and how you take things onto yourself." Her left hand was now desperately clutching the sleeve of his shirt. "I _know_ this, but I still kept jabbing at you."

He was at a loss with her behaviour. He could handle Tatsuki being 'fist in the face' upset. He'd been there before and with her fiery nature it was normal, expected even. But this was something so foreign that he didn't know how to deal with it. But foreign or not, he couldn't stand to see her so upset. Seeing her look so vulnerable and miserable twisted something in his guts.

"Tatsuki, I should be apologizing to you," he began. "I hurt you when I left the dojo. I didn't know it then but I do now. Even after all you did in sticking by me after Mom died, I threw it away by leaving. I hurt you by not telling you about what I was involved in. I thought I could keep you from it and protect you from what was going on. But I should have known better."

He looked directly into her watery eyes and it was getting hard for him to keep the emotional quaver out of his voice. "I know you better than that Tatsuki. I always trusted you with everything else you knew about me, but I didn't trust you with that and I should have. You were right. Even if you couldn't have fought you still deserved to know what was going on. We used to know everything about each other, we told each other everything and didn't keep secrets. We hung out all the time and I miss that so much Tats, I really do. You had every right to be pissed at me that day and for wanting to kick my ass. I wouldn't blame you now if you really did hate my guts."

She took a deep shuddering breath but continued to look him in the eye. "Ichigo...I don't want to beat you up or yell at you or hurt you," she said, harkening back to his final words to her that day. "And I don't hate your guts...if anything it's the exact opposite."

She finally lost the battle and tears started to freely roll down her cheeks. "You asked me what you were to me. You're that smiling little orange haired kid that cried every time I hit him, but who kept coming back anyway. You're the first real friend I ever made. You're that broken kid I didn't know how to help after you lost your Mom, and you're that scowling, punk ass jerk that always takes every burden upon himself and won't let any one share the load."

She sniffled and swiped her tears away with her ever present wrist bands. "But most of all Ichigo," her voice was cracking and betraying her now. "You're the first and only boy I've ever had feelings for." She shakily looked into his warm, now wide brown eyes again. "I love you Ichigo. That's what you are to me. You're the boy that I love."

That's when the dam broke completely. On instinct and without hesitation, despite his disbelief at what he had just heard, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to him. She buried her face in his shoulder and her fists were gripping his shirt. Her body was wracked with sobs as the tension of the last few weeks, maybe of longer than that, all let go at once.

_'She loves me...'_

To say the least he was shocked to hear something like that come out of her mouth, but he couldn't deny that something about it just felt...like that's how it was supposed to be. It felt like a missing piece had just snapped back into place, but how could that be? After his mother had died he had never let anyone into his heart, so how could he be feeling as if something that had gone missing had now been returned to him?

Had he really become so emotionally stunted and distant that he had been totally unable to notice the truth, that he really did have deep feelings for Tatsuki? How long had she had feelings like this for him? Had she always known, or like him did she only just figure it out after their blow out? It made him feel even worse for what a damn fool he'd been towards her.

He wrapped his other arm around her in their awkward, sideways embrace, and let his chin come to rest on top of her head within her spiky locks. "You know Tats, I think I just might love you too."

He surprised himself with how easily he was able to say it, and it was the truth too. The feeling that went through him upon saying it confirmed what his mind had been having trouble coming to terms with.

He really did love Tatsuki Arisawa. Always had.

The Vale Tudo champ backed out of his embrace enough to be able to look up at him with hopeful eyes. "Do you mean that Ichigo?" she asked in the most innocent tone of voice he'd ever heard from her.

He smiled. It wasn't the bright hundred watt smile of his early childhood, but it gave her a familiar and long missed feeling. "Yeah, I do," he answered. "I guess I've reached my limit and can't keep my heart closed off anymore. I can't keep ignoring and pushing aside the things I feel."

Boldly, for him, he began to thumb away the tears from her cheeks. Tears looked so disturbingly wrong on her face. "Our fight made me think about all the time we used to spend together. It made me realize just how close we had been, but we were way too young then to ever think about it becoming anything else. After my Mom died I wouldn't let anyone else back into my heart. I didn't want to risk feeling a hurt like that ever again and I cut myself off from even thinking about anyone that way."

She understood what he was talking about. She had been there as the steel shutters closed off his wounded heart. She had seen the affections of others deflect off time and again as the barriers he had subconsciously put up left him oblivious to their intent, seemingly totally unaware of it altogether on any level.

But for him to be as he was right at this moment, she knew that there had to be some part of him deep inside that was fully aware of it. There was some little space within him that was still held open by the faintest trace of hope that someone would find their way in and fill it despite the fear of feeling that sort of pain again.

"What about now Ichigo?" she asked in a near whisper, unable to meet his eyes. "Can you open your heart enough to let me in?"

"That's the thing Tats, I think you're already there." That did cause her to meet his gaze and she saw a slight, sad, apologetic smile grace his lips and it was reflected in his eyes. "I think you always have been and I never realized it until now. My heart's yours if you want it Tatsuki."

Her eyes went wide and everything seemed to stop for a split second. Next thing he knew her arms went around him in a crushing embrace...more of a tackle really...and they ended up rolling down the hill to the flats a few feet from the water's edge.

They came to a stop with an 'oof' from Ichigo who was on the bottom. Instinctively, he had wrapped his arms around her as they tumbled and she was held tightly to him, her legs tangled up with his. The feel of her warm breath on his neck and her hair tickling his face was distracting. As was the feel of her chest being pressed against his.

A perverted part of him noticed that his childhood friend had a little more going on under her shirt than what his eyes had been telling him. With a heated blush that perverted part was stomped back into the deeper recesses of his mind. But not before it could give commentary on how good she smelled, how nice her firm, athletic legs looked, or just how very nice those cut offs made her ass look.

He seriously began to wonder if letting Kon use his body hadn't left a lasting, residual effect upon his brain.

For the next few moments neither of them seemed to want to let go of the other. At least until the realization of their position fully kicked in and embarrassment took over causing them to separate at record speed. They sat a foot apart, neither able to look at the other just yet, and allowed a few moments for their heart rates to slow, their breathing to calm, and their fiery blushes to recede.

"Do you really mean it Ichigo?" she asked again quietly. She had to be sure. Now that she had finally accepted and admitted her feelings for him and had offered him her heart, she had to be sure that he was truly accepting it. That he was really letting her into his.

He reached out and plucked a dead leaf from her hair. "I really mean it. My heart is yours. I was too dense and too damaged to see what was right in front of me and I don't want to be like that anymore. You've always been able to see all of me, the real me, even the parts that I tried to hide." He took a calming breath. "I really do love you too Tatsuki, and I want to be with you."

A great weight lifted from his soul when he said those words and it felt like some small part of the empty space within him was now being filled. He knew he was taking a risk, but that was a part of life. It had taken a long time for him to see it, but everyone held that same risk of loss and heartache when they let someone into their heart. He had spent too long punishing himself for what he had lost, and if the truth were to be told, there was a part of him that had become lonely because of it.

To see others walking hand in hand, to see two people in love steal a kiss or look so adoringly into each others eyes, these were all things that silently stabbed at him. He didn't begrudge them their love or happiness, if anything it further fuelled his desire to protect as many people as he could. The loneliness came from pointing himself in a direction and assigning himself a task that meant that he could never be one of those people.

He had never allowed himself to heal from the loss of his mother. Naively, stupidly, and selfishly he had taken a burden upon himself and wore it like a martyr's cloak. He would seal off his heart and take all of the pain in its myriad forms so others, especially those he held dearest, would not have to suffer any of it.

He hadn't realized until he lost his powers, lost part of his soul, just how wrong he had been. In that last instant where he became one with the two entities inside of him, he finally learned the lesson that so many had tried to impart to him about not trying to do everything alone. He came to realize that he simply wasn't the type of person who could truly turn his heart off and not feel the pangs of loneliness he had forced upon himself. He wasn't cold and uncaring. He wasn't inhuman. He needed companionship, warmth, and love just as much as anyone else.

Now, right here in front of him was the proof. The girl that had been such an important part of his life, more important than he had ever realized, was filling that empty space in his heart. A space that he felt had belonged to her all along. The feeling he had right now was warm, both exciting and nervous and unlike anything he had felt before.

Tatsuki was feeling pretty much the same way. She had never been a 'girly' girl, never paid a lot of attention to things like love or matters of the heart. Sure, she had listened to her friends go on about such things but she had never felt an overwhelming desire to experience it herself.

Ever since she was a kid, she'd had one singular purpose. To be the strongest girl in Japan, to be not only a Vale Tudo champion, but to be the greatest champion the sport had ever seen. She had been driven to be strong and independent.

Boys had been, well, boys. Many avoided her because she could and had beaten them up or defeated them in spars, while others treated her like she didn't belong until she kicked their asses and proved otherwise. And of course there had been a few that couldn't take no for an answer and got a little too hands on with her and they had paid a painful price for it.

None had ever held any of her interest except for the usually scowling orange head sitting next to her. He had been a totally different case and it took years for her to ever figure out why.

She had never really been what she would identify as lonely. Sure there had been a few times when she felt a little isolated. She was a tomboy and a tough girl, she was a fighter and she had a temper. She had heard a lot of unflattering and downright nasty things said about her behind her back. Few had the guts to say it to her face and when they did, it didn't end well.

She had never felt isolated when she was around Ichigo. Maybe that was why it had hurt so much the day she confronted him about Orihime's disappearance. He was trying to protect her by isolating her from the world he was now up to his neck in. Deep inside it felt like he was rejecting her. It had hurt and she lashed out at him hard. She had regretted it ever since, yet the remembrance of that feeling was the fuel that had kept her hounding him until it brought her something worse.

She had made him angry, made him lash back at her and it very nearly brought the end of everything that had or ever could happen between them. But, she got lucky. The incident made them both think about what they really meant to one another. It made them see that the very idea of losing their long connection to one another was too much to take.

"So...um...what do we do now?" he asked sheepishly, nervously scratching the back of his head.

"Why are you asking me?" she blurted. "I don't have any more experience at this than you do!"

They stared at each other for a moment, then both started to laugh. Seemed like they were both already over thinking things.

"What if...we just started by hanging out together like we used to and take it from there?" she suggested.

"That's sounds like a good idea," he agreed. It would be a comfortable and familiar place for them to start as their newly admitted feelings for one another began to influence them. Embarrassingly his stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly.

"Heh...how about we start with going for lunch?"

She smirked at him. "Race you up the hill. Loser buys." And she was off.

"I was going to buy anyway," he said, taking off a second later. He tried very hard on his way up to not stare at her ass. And failed spectacularly.

_'What the hell's wrong with me?'_ he thought to himself as his inner pervert did a little victory dance while waving a pair of paper fans. And why did his inner pervert look like a chibi Geta Boshi?

Meanwhile, Tatsuki's own inner pervert made itself known, making her wonder if Ichigo was looking and sheepishly realizing that she didn't really mind if he was.

_'What the hell...?!'_

* * *

As they walked along the pathway back into town, they were both having similar thoughts. While it felt good to be at each others side again like they always used to be, there was definitely something different about it now. Nothing bad, just a little strange and a little awkward, a nervous feeling brought on by their freshly revealed feelings for one another. It would take a little bit for it get back to that old comfortable and carefree level, but they were sure that it would.

How could it not?

"I'll tell you," Ichigo said suddenly.

"Huh?" His sudden out of the blue comment had caught her by surprise. She looked to find him with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

"I'll tell you everything Tatsuki," he answered quietly. "From the night I got my powers until the day I lost them. I'll tell you everything and answer every question you have. No more secrets and no more hiding stuff from you."

"Ichigo..."

"But, some of it's gonna be ugly," he added, now looking into her eyes. "There are going to be things that are hard for you to hear...and hard for me to tell."

"I don't expect it to be easy," she said. "But there's been nothing easy about any of this has there?"

He sighed. "I suppose you're right."

* * *

Late that evening as she soaked in the tub and then lay sleepless and staring at the ceiling of her room, her mind kept going over what he had told her. He hadn't been kidding when he said there were things that would be hard to hear and to tell. They had both ran the gamut of emotions over the course of the day and evening and it had left them both feeling a little spent.

She had gotten what she wanted, the unvarnished truth of what he had been through and it indeed hadn't been pretty. The horrible wounds he had taken, the fear and helplessness and self doubts he had felt...that had come through in his telling of events. It had shaken her to her core and it had taken everything she had not to break down in front of him again. Even now the very thought of him wounded and bleeding, the thought of him _dying_ sent a cold chill down her spine and made her heart clench.

She had been virtually speechless when he finished talking and had done the only thing that came to mind. Just like on the riverbank she had launched herself at him and had crushed him with a hug as if she were trying to absorb him into her own body. When she could finally speak she made him promise that if he ever got his powers back he would not let himself get so brutally carved up or killed again.

And if he did, _she'd_ introduce him to a whole new level of pain as punishment.

Of course, when she had him immobilized on his bed in that emotionally fuelled bear hug, that was just exactly the time that Isshin barged in with some nonsense about her finally making a man out of his worthless son. A kick from both of them sent him flying down the hall and tumbling down the stairs. While Yuzu frantically ran for the first aid kit, Karin just chuckled at his misfortune and called him a moron.

Well, it had served to lighten the moment back up, though it was disturbing that Isshin saw nothing wrong with eavesdropping at the door in the hopes that something X-rated would happen. And that he dragged the girls into it too, though she suspected Karin tagged along just to see Goat Chin get pummelled and to get in on it if she could.

She sighed and pushed the gloomier thoughts and the chaos of the Kurosaki household to the side. It felt good to be close to Ichigo again, felt like it was where she belonged. Plus there was that extra little tinge of excitement and nervousness at the relationship being something more now than it was before. Little things like how they had both made moves towards holding hands as he walked her home, but both failed to connect and then chickened out.

It made her chuckle. Seemed kind of pathetic, but for two people with personalities like theirs it was a big freaking deal, a major admission of their feelings toward one another that they couldn't quite make yet. Cripes, they had only just admitted to being in love, their broken connection was just being re-established and any overt show of affection would happen when it happened. It's not like there was any reason to hurry. They would put that old friendship back together first and let this thing grow as it would.

With those warm thoughts in mind she rolled over and settled in, feeling like maybe now she could get to sleep. Despite the side effects of hearing the story, she felt that she was a little closer to him now, knew and understood him a little better and with the hurdle of their fight now in the past, the future was looking a lot brighter.

Hopefully it would stay that way.

* * *

_**One Year Later:**_

She didn't know how much more of this she could take.

She sat on the slope above the river bank, the same place where she and Ichigo first admitted that they loved each other. She sat with her head against her upraised knees and her fingers threaded into her long hair. At this point she could care less if anyone passing by on the flats below could see up her skirt due to her less than ladylike posture. They could snap pictures of her panties to their hearts content for all she cared at the moment, she had far more important things on her mind right now than worrying about any potential peeping perverts.

The last year had produced more challenges than she would have liked. Her relationship with Ichigo was great, that was the one thing that remained unaffected. They got closer and their feelings grew deeper and deeper every day. It took a couple of months before either of them worked up the nerve to take the other by the hand, and a couple more before their first kiss...which was so much better than she ever could have imagined.

They had even reached a point where they had begun to explore one another a little. It was frightening and exciting at the same time, the sensations could be so intense. Just recently they had taken to spending time laying together, naked from the waist up with her using him for a futon. The feel of so much of their bare skin being in contact. Her breasts pressed against his muscled chest. The feel of their hearts beating against one another as they either looked into each others eyes or left them closed and just savoured the contact...it was an experience that she could scarcely put words to.

The first challenge had been in telling Orihime that she and Ichigo were together. To her credit, Orihime had sat quietly and listened to her explain how it had happened. She could see that it was tearing the girl apart and made her feel like she had just driven a knife into her best friend's guts.

She didn't see Hime for two days after that and it worried the hell out of her. Even if she had broken the girl's heart she couldn't leave her be so she finally worked up the courage to go and see her.

They spent the entire night talking. Hime had done a lot of thinking and concluded that she would never not love Ichigo, just like she would never not love her best friend. If she had to lose out on Ichigo to anyone, she was glad that it was to her. She was glad that they were happy together and she had really always had a feeling that her tomboy friend actually liked Ichigo more than she ever let on.

It would hurt for a while, but they would all still be friends. Just being able to still be a part of the lives of the two people who she loved the most and who had done so much for her would be alright. She would be alright. And to her credit she was. They all continued to get along as best of friends, each day becoming a little easier than the last as things got back to being as close to normal as possible.

The second problem was when Ginjo Kugo showed up saying he could replace the powers that Ichigo had lost. They had talked about that subject shortly after they got together. What would they do if Ichigo's powers began to come back or some way came up that he could get them back? She hadn't hesitated to tell him that if either happened he should grab on with both hands and not let go. She knew him, knew what those powers had meant to him and she had seen him at his miserable worst without them. If he could regain that lost part of himself he should do it.

Something about Ginjo had made alarm bells go off in her head right from the start. She didn't trust him and told Ichigo so. He didn't trust him either but he wanted to go through with it. The Fullbringer's wouldn't meet him with her tagging along, so she was glad when it turned out that Chad would be around too. She knew she could trust the big guy to watch Ichigo's back.

Her body began to shake and her anger soared as it always did when she thought of how it had all played out in the end. They had just been using him all along, helping him regain his power so they could steal it for themselves. She was glad she hadn't seen what happened when they betrayed him and took that power back, she wouldn't have been able to bear it. She only wished she could forget the crushed look on his face when she herself had turned against him due to that bastard Tsukishima's fullbring ability.

Unknown to her, a bluish-white aura flared around her as she remembered the violation she suffered at the hands of that son of a bitch. He had insinuated himself into her memories, made her believe that he had been the one to bring her and Ichigo together after their fight. That he had been the one to make them see that they loved each other and that they belonged together.

He had raped her memories, forever staining the greatest and most cherished moment of her life and used her to further hurt Ichigo and drive him into a state of despair so they could betray and humiliate him.

It took weeks after his death at the hands of Rukia's brother for the false memories to cease being dominant over the truth, but it was absolute hell in the meantime. She pushed everyone away, including her fellow victims. She had even pushed Ichigo away in her bid to isolate herself and find some way to purge the rotten taint from her mind on her own and regain the purity and innocence of the truth.

But every time she looked at Ichigo that false memory would flood her mind, reminding her of how lucky she was that their good friend Tsukishima had helped them to mend the rift between them and made them see what they truly meant to one another. It nearly drove her mad.

If she ever found out that his soul had somehow gone to the Soul Society she would find a way to get there and hunt him down. She would kill him again herself with her bare hands, inflicting as much pain as possible in doing so.

But no matter how much she yelled and screamed for him to leave her alone, no matter how much she tried to punctuate her point with her fists and feet, Ichigo had refused to be shut out and wouldn't let her be alone.

On one particularly bad night he wrapped his arms around her thrashing, screaming form, holding her tight and refusing to let go, and surrounded her with a blanket of his spirit energy. All the while he whispered soothing words to her and told her how much he loved her. She ended up breaking down into a sobbing, exhausted heap and he held her until she finally cried herself to sleep. He held her throughout the night, never leaving her side.

Things began to get better after that, the effects of the false memories fading a little more each day. It still angered her and it still hurt, the stain was still there and she didn't know if it would ever fully go away. But it wasn't consuming her every waking thought anymore. She knew the real truth and so long as she had Ichigo in her life that violation would never hold sway over her again.

When she was finally more or less back to being herself, she had taken the time to privately thank both Urahara and Isshin for their role in helping Ichigo get his powers back, and asked that her thanks be passed on to all of the other exiles in Karakura who had contributed some of their own power to the cause.

However, she would convey no such thanks to the rest of the shinigami. All of the Captains and Lieutenants may have contributed their spirit energy as well, but they had also been prepared to kill Ichigo if he had sided with Ginjo in the end. They should have known better than to think that Ichigo would be swayed by the former substitute shinigami's hate filled words. For everything he had done for them and sacrificed for them, they didn't seem to know him very well.

She was even less impressed with them right now because once again, the fuckers needed Ichigo to bail their sorry asses out of yet another mess. Why him? Why couldn't they take care of their own problems and just leave him alone? Why did they constantly need him to bail them out?

She glanced at her school bag and at the black and white slip of paper sticking up out of the open top flap. A Soul Ticket, a pass to freely come and go from the Soul Society, given to her not an hour ago by Captain Shunsui Kyoraku. He also gave one to Keigo and Mizuiro, and apparently to Ichigo's sisters and Goat Chin as well. While she had remained reasonably calm during their talk with the Captain, unlike Keigo, she couldn't say she was in the same state now as she digested what they had been told.

While the Captain hadn't gone into great details, it was clear that Ichigo was training or otherwise preparing somehow for whatever was going on. It was possible that he might become even more powerful than he already was, so powerful that it might have negative effects on the world of the living and that he would have to stay in the Soul Society if that was the case.

Kyoraku had said the chances of that were actually pretty slim, but it was a chance none the less and the mere thought of it made her chest ache. What if he couldn't come back? What good was the Soul Ticket to her anyway? It wasn't as if her family knew about spirits and the afterlife like his did, she couldn't just pick up and go to Soul Society for any length of time.

If he needed more power to fight, then this situation was beyond any level of serious she had been able to imagine thus far. Even more serious than Aizen and that scared the hell out of her. It also meant that there was a pretty good likelihood that he would get hurt again.

The tales of his injuries had been bad enough, but she still remembered all too well her feeling of horror the first time they seriously got a little frisky and she pretty much forced him out of his shirt and she saw all the scars he carried.

Her reaction had killed the mood real quick and had made for not such a fun evening. Along with being horrified she had also been ashamed of her reaction, but Ichigo didn't hold it against her. He said he understood and had pretty much been expecting it.

It had also reignited her anger with the shinigami, giving her even more reason to see them as being incompetent beyond belief . Every scar be bore was an indictment against them and their inability to take care of their own business as far as she was concerned.

But what if he was killed this time instead of just adding to his collection of scars? What if he was badly wounded and Orihime couldn't get to him or even his inner hollow couldn't take over and save him?

A panicked feeling began to overtake her and she began to shake, the bluish aura around her growing with it. How much more of his body and his soul did he have to give them, how much more of his blood did they want before they would be satisfied?

Her fists clenched so tightly that her fingernails bit into her palms, drawing blood. Her breathing became harsh and ragged and she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the liquid that had been accumulating there to leak out and run down her cheeks. The aura around her began to twist and flicker like flames. With a long scream of pure frustration and fury she slammed her fists into the ground, unknowingly sending a ripple through the earth around her as if it was water.

She raised her head and screamed at the sky, blue flames shooting up around her and surging into the air. "Give him back!" she raged to the heavens. "He's not yours, give him back to me!" Her fists slammed the ground again, causing another shock wave and making the blue flames reach higher into the sky.

Suddenly they burst away from her and disappeared. She sagged like a marionette with its strings cut, feeling totally drained. Only her fists still embedded in the small craters they had formed were keeping her upright.

"I love him and I want him back," she pleaded, her voice now sounding raw and strained. "He should be here with me, not fighting wars for you."

The feared Dragon of Karakura didn't look so tough right now with her head hanging low and tears dripping from her eyes, but she didn't care. She was so afraid that she'd never see Ichigo again, never hang out and have fun, never be held by him anymore, or hold his hand or kiss him. Afraid she would no longer be able to lay with him and feel their hearts beating against one another in the peaceful quiet. Afraid that they would never experience anything more of their lives together.

She loathed the helpless, scared and lonely feeling she had right now and the worst part of it was that there wasn't a single damn thing she could do about it.

* * *

A few yards behind her, in his shihakusho clad shinigami form, Isshin Kurosaki kept a silent watch. He had felt the initial leakage of the teen's power and had arrived in time to see the explosion of it and hear her anguished pleas.

He had been pretty much a helpless spectator after Ichigo lost his powers and all contact with anyone from the afterlife. He hadn't known what to do for his son as he watched him slowly become disconnected from the world around him, a world he could no longer fight to protect. Not even his usual goofball antics or the best efforts of Yuzu and Karin were able to keep him from slowly drifting away.

But when he came home with Tatsuki that day about a year earlier, the look on his face told Isshin that something had changed for the better. He had been surprised actually. There were a number of girls...and a few women...that he knew had some level of feelings and attraction to his son, but he had never thought that the one who would be able claim his heart would be the Dragon.

He supposed he should have known. After all, what girl had known him longer and knew him better than she did? They just seemed to fit together so easily and naturally and he owed her a great debt of gratitude. By connecting...reconnecting with him, she had begun to heal all of those broken connections that had left him adrift. She returned him to something close to his old self. He smiled more now than he had in a long time and the girls were ecstatic that their adored big brother wasn't hurting so much anymore, which in turn meant that Ichigo didn't feel so bad for making them worry about him.

He knew that Tatsuki was a strong and proud girl and it wrenched at his heart to see her upset and hurting like this. He wasn't particularly happy about his son seemingly being the answer every time the Soul Society ran into problems either, but there was little that could be done about it right now.

The paranoid and xenophobic entity that was Central 46, the overbearing noble structure, the stuck in the past reliance on the old ways. The ridiculous fact that the actual effective fighting strength of the squads was mostly limited to the small number of Captain's and Lieutenants while nearly everyone else was practically useless against anything stronger than a common hollow. And there were many who couldn't even handle that much.

Little wonder his son and his friends had been able to wreak as much havoc as they had when they went to stop Rukia's execution. The rank and file Soul Reapers were unable to do anything against them. It had been up to the senior officers to stop a few ryoka while their troops filled up the wards of the Fourth Division hospital.

But even with the unjustness of Ichigo having to act as their sword and shield yet again, and even with his fatherly worries for the safety of his son, he had full confidence in the boy. He would find a way to come out on top of this conflict too, despite the odds. That's just how Ichigo rolled. He would protect as many as he could and he would cut the chains of fate and deliver defeat to the enemy.

Ichigo and his friends would come home. He would return to him and his loving sisters and the fierce girl who loved him. Though she just might punch him first for taking off so suddenly.

He began making his way over to her. He would take the exhausted girl home to one of Yuzu's wonderful meals, no doubt she'd be famished after expending that much energy, and then he'd sit them all down and tell them exactly what was going on and why. They all deserved to know and there was no point in holding the truth back from them any longer.

And he would properly thank her for restoring Ichigo's spirits, for being able to reach his heart and finally making that part of him whole again for the first time since Masaki's death.

"He will come back won't he?" she asked hopefully as he stepped up beside her.

He should have known she'd sense him at some point. "Of course he will," he boasted. "He's my son and your boyfriend after all, there's no way he'll not make it back. And when he does we'll all kick his delinquent ass for just taking off so rudely and making us all worry."

A small smirk came to her lips. "Yeah, we will," she agreed quietly.

And then she would get stronger, do whatever it took to unlock her own power and forge an even more unbreakable connection with him so that they would never be separated again for _any_ reason.

* * *

**AN:** Hopefully that didn't suck _too _hard.

I'd really appreciate it if you would leave me a review.

And if you do, please keep in mind that if you ask me a question or want me to clarify something, it's a little hard for me to respond if it is an unsigned review and therefore has no reply link attached to it.


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